Nothing Dreadful Ever Happens
by dunbarbw
Summary: It was supposed to be a simple job. Smash and grab. The brothers never could have imagined the dark things that would take notice. Or how fast things could spiral out of control.
1. Chapter 1

**Darwin, Abu Dhabi, UAE**

As the van lurched through the early evening traffic Darwin found himself wishing he could be anywhere else but where he was. He hated the desert, hated everything about. He hated the sand that would inevitably get in his boots, hated the dry heat, the lack of clouds in the sky. He admired what the Arabs were doing, raising a city out of the ocean, but despite the glistening sky scrapers and clean concrete it was still in the middle of a desert. If it was up to him they wouldn't have taken the job, but Wylie had assured him of it's ease so who was he to argue? He could stomach the desert for a few days. Besides, a job's a job.

"Hey…Dar…you there mate? You look a million miles away."

"If only," Darwin muttered under his breath."

"What was that then?"

"Nothing. I'm fine. Just wanna get this done and get out of here."

They drove on in silence for another mile or two, Darwin running the job down in his head for the hundredth time.

"Hey Dar, you ever wonder what Pop's up too?"

Darwin was about to say something but paused and shifted in his seat to look at his lanky twin. He was slouched over in the passenger seat smoking a cigarette, one long leg hanging out of the window, watching the smoke curl up and disappear into the air.

"You're serious?"

"Yeah, course I am."

"Wylie, why would I ever wonder what Pop's up too?"

"I dunno…was just asking."

He watched Wylie take a drag on his cigarette and run his hand through his brown hair then turned his attention back towards the road. They're destination loomed large just a mile or two in front of them.

"Well do you think they'd tell us if anything happened to him? Like if he was dead?"

"I doubt it," Darwin said after thinking a moment. "We aren't exactly their favorite people."

"Oh come on, you don't think they're still sore about that thing on Chimeria do you? After all this time?"

"Why wouldn't they be?"

"Cause that was forever ago," his twin said incredulously. "I mean they don't seem to mind us taking jobs. We've been doing that since we got here. Why wouldn't they let us know if Pop kicked the bucket?"

"Because Wylie, they don't him. They like us even less. There is a reason we were banished to this backwater shithole and it's not you going fucking megaton on Chimeria. That was just the excuse they were waiting for. Now get it together, we're here."

Here was the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority Tower, or more specifically, the adjacent parking garage. Their contact in the city had provided them with their cover, contractors hired to repair speed bumps in the tunnel that connected the parking garage and the tower. They showed the guard at the gatehouse their credentials and work order and he gave them directions to the tunnel and relatively good English. There was another gatehouse at the beginning of the tunnel, but again their credentials came through. The guards were actually quite happy someone was finally here to fix the potholes.

"That's the last one yeah?"

"Yeah," Wylie said, already slipping out of the blue jumpsuit he was wearing.

"Alright…what corner is the power station in again?"

"Just a tic," he said he pulled a blueprint of the building and flipped clockwise, then counter-clockwise, then clockwise again. "Eh, northeast."

"Take the wheel," and he did while Darwin slid out of his own jumpsuit.

They rolled past delivery trucks, armored cars, limousines, then down a ramp into a more sparsely occupied level, subbasement 4 according to the signs, and finally stopped next to large collection of turbines and generators. It struck him as odd that a single building would need as much power as this power station could obviously supply but he put it out of his mind. Darwin breathed a heavy sigh and rubbed his temples before turning to his brother again.

"Alright Wylie, run it down for me one more time."

"Standard smash and grab. Target's on the 13 floor."

"Target is?"

"Samuel Castro. Spoiled brat who wanted to rebel, ran off, joined a cult, daddy said come home, cult said no, daddy pays us to get him. Like I said, stan…uh oh…"

"Huh," Darwin said confused and then turned around to see what his brother was gawking at. A heavyset Arab carrying an Uzi who'd been smoking had just noticed them and was coming this way. He wasn't a guard, too well dressed. He was someone's hired muscle. As he drew closer he started shouting in Arabic. Arabic was easily the most widespread language Darwin had never bothered to learn. It was mostly due to his complete disdain for the area it was normally spoken in, but he made a mental note to learn it if they succeeded today.

"Wylie, you know what he's saying?"

"Ehhhh, something about papers and how we shouldn't be down here."

"Oh yeah papers! You want our papers," Darwin smiled at the man, kept smiling , and as he put a finger up to signal 'just give me a moment' the big man stopped. Darwin reached into the compartment between Wylie and himself and before the Arab could take another step he whirled around and put three .45 ACP rounds in the man's chest.

"Get him, I'll arm the bomb."

As Wylie hefted the man onto his shoulder with ease Darwin slid his Colt .45 into his belt and went to the back of the van. Throwing open the doors he did a mental check of van's contents. Wylie's M3A1, his Tavor, a varying array of 9MM handguns, grenades, flashbangs, a hatchet, a machete, a sawed-off double barrel shotgun, and there in the very back a prodigious amount of C-4 plastic explosive.

"Wylie," Darwin said as his brother through the dead man into the van, ", how much C-4 did you tell them to get?"

"Lots and lots! Oh look a hatchet! I call the hatchet!"

"You can have it if you shut your mouth and quiet down."

In silence they equipped themselves, sliding on Kevlar, elbow and knee pads, extra clips of ammo. It wasn't until they were almost ready to head out when his brother again brought up their father.

"Ya know, Darwin, you could use the conjuring ball and just call him. I know it's been 80 years and the magic's almost run out but maybe we could find a fairy or something and…"

"And what then eh," his patience finally at an end, ", we'll give Pop a call and see if he wants to come take a holiday on Earth? He doesn't like it here Wylie! The last time he was here he failed a contract and in a drunken stupor he knocked up mom!"

"Come on now Dar that's not the last time he was here. He came back and got us remember?"

"Yes Wylie I do remember. The assassin the Collective sent to clean up Pop's mess saw us and recognized immediately that we were half Britlingen. That's when Pop came back, under threat of his own banishment mind you, and took us away to be raised by the Collective."

"We had some fun growing up there though…didn't we?"

"You and I have a very different understanding of the word fun big brother," Darwin said clapping his hand on his brother's shoulder. "Now grab the gas masks and the parachutes and throw them in the duffle bag. Toss some of that extra C-4 and the detonators in there too while you're at it."

Wylie smiled at him, did as he was told, and the two of them strolled to the service elevator. Darwin checked the Sona-Scanner on his wrist and sighed. It was a cheap, low tech imitation of the one he had when he was with the Collective. Instead of a fully functioning three dimensional map it showed a two dimensional blue grid with anything making enough noise to be picked up showing up as a dot.

"1313 right?"

"Yup."

Darwin scrolled around until he found 1313 and the Sona-Scanner showed 19 dots on in the room.

"Alright…let's get on with it," Darwin said as he handed Wylie an Israeli M15 gas mask from their duffle bag and put on his own.

"Next stop, 13th floor."


	2. Chapter 2

**Wylie, Elevator, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority Tower**

As the service elevator made it's climb the Britlingens made their final preparations, running down a mental checklist drilled into them since childhood. Wylie was rocking back and forth on his heels whistling to himself, watching his brother check the sights on his rifle.

"So Wylie, who exactly is the kid's father," Darwin asked, his voice muffled by the gas mask.

"Dunno. Didn't meet him," Wylie answered, his reply muffled as well.

"What do you mean?"

"What'd you mean what'd you mean? I didn't meet him."

"Wylie, if you didn't meet him then who brokered the deal?"

"The family's lawyer."

"Lawyer? What lawyer," Darwin asked looking up.

"Some fanger, said his name was Vallon."

Darwin let out a deep sigh, removed his mask, and turned to look at him. If you didn't know it you would have a hard time telling Wylie and Darwin were twins. Wylie was taller than his brother by a head but Darwin was better put together, not all arms and legs like he was. Darwin had his sand colored hair cropped close at the sides and kept the top slicked back out of his eyes as opposed to the messy mop of brown he possessed. Honestly the only distinctive feature the two of them shared was the pale green eye they had inherited from Pop.

"That never struck you as, I don't know, odd? A vampire hiring us to rescue a human who's held captive by a cult that just so happens to be headquartered at the United Arab Emirates investment bank? That doesn't seem strange?"

"Well…I mean when you put it that way," he said dejectedly, feeling sick to his stomach, "I'm sorry. What're we gonna do Dar?"

"What do you think? We may not be with the Collective, but we're still Britlingens. We'll finish the contract," Darwin said with disdain in his voice, "but this is the last time you're in charge of picking a job."

"Fair enough."

They rode up the remaining three floors in silence, leveling their weapons as the elevator came to a halt. Darwin moved to the front with Wylie at his back. Though Wylie had been born a few minutes earlier and was technically older he'd always deferred to Darwin as the senior. Darwin was always calm, collected, and aware of everything going on around him, the opposite of Pop and himself. But as different as he was behaviorally he looked a lot like Pop. Wylie always thought that's why Darwin hated himself so much.

When the elevator doors opened they moved fast and quiet to the first cover corner they saw. Darwin checked the scanner on his wrist signaled to Wylie to move out. They moved in lock step down the hallway, covering corners, stopping occasionally for Darwin to check the scanner. Before coming to a large room his brother held his hand up and the two ducked into a supply room.

"This stinks," his brother said in a hoarse whisper.

"Dar I already told you sorry what more do you want?"

"No Wylie, focus! It stinks in here."

"I don't smell anything," he said taking a deep whiff.

Darwin ripped his gas mask off and motioned for him to try again. At first it was almost pleasant, it reminded him of the sea, wet and salty. But beneath the briny smell there was something else. When working for the Collective Wylie had been to some horrible smelling places, but none of them had such a potent and repugnant odor. It was like somebody had taken something dead and rotten from a tidal pool and tossed it into a microwave.

"Ugh! What's that? Fish?"

"Not likely. Let's keep moving."

Wylie put his mask back on and they exited the closet and continued on into the next room, a large office space. It's dimensions were exceptionally strange. There weren't any traditional corners but there strange bulges at different points along the walls, and the cubicles weren't arranged in the typical linear fashion. Even stranger than that was that the cubicles didn't appear to have been used.

"Dar?"

"Wylie?"

"This is an investment bank yeah?"

"Yeah."

"So uh…where are all the bankers?"

"I don't know, but 1313 is just around the corner, get ready."

Wylie and his brother rounded the corner and came upon the double doors. He watched his brother check the Sona-Scanner once more, paying close attention to the hand signals Darwin flashed at him. He took a breach charge out of the duffel bag and placed it on the doors while his brother readied a flash grenade. He glanced over one more time to make sure Darwin was ready then armed the charge.

3…

2…

1…

As the doors exploded inwards Darwin tossed the flashbang inside. They waited for the flash, heard the pop, and then went in guns blazing. Wylie whipped his grease gun in a wide arc, mowing down the five gunmen on the left. He listened to his brother controlled bursts, one, two, three men dead.

"Side room," he shouted as he kicked ripped a door off the hinges and hurled himself out of the way as Darwin chucked a grenade through the doorway.

"Five left," Darwin shouted back after the explosion, "check ammo!"

While changing his clip a door creaked open and out shuffled a man in dark green robes. He looked to be Arab but his skin was pallid and his eyes seemed to be bulging out of his skull. He surveyed the carnage about him and then his gaze settled on Wylie. With a gurgling noise he launched forward, faster than someone so unhealthy looking should have. He pumped a few rounds into the thing but when it failed to phase the thing he reached behind his back gripped the hatchet firmly. When the thing was close enough Wylie swung it as hard as he could into the things skull, and with the sound of a wet newspaper hitting concrete hit lodged itself into the things head and it fell over dead.

Three other men shambled out of the room, as pale as the first but more deformed. They reached out towards the Britlingens but Darwin's Tovar cleaved their heads in two, spilling dark viscous blood all over the room.

"Samuel Castro," his brother shouted as Wylie and he moved into the room the sick things had come from.

"Yeah! Oh shit, yeah!"

As Darwin cut the kid's bindings Wylie stared slack-jawed at what adorned the room. Parchments on material that looked…organic, a statue of a pharaoh with skin the color of night, an oil painting of a fat black goat with a human smile feeding an indeterminable number of young, a bust of an octopus with a man's eyes.

"We're getting you out of here."

"Oh God, oh thank you. I'll be quick, just gimme that sack," the slight fellow was rushing all over the room, scanning the walls, throwing open drawers in a frantic search.

"No. We're leaving," Darwin said.

"No, no, no…we can't! If I leave now Vallon and the King will be so, so angry with me."

"King," his brother tilted his head inquisitively, "what King?"

"King Miles."

"Miles Bedford? The vampire King of Massachusetts!?"

"Yeah."

"Look at that Wylie," his brother said, "We're involved in vampire politics now! You have one minute human. Wylie, search them and see if you can find anything useful."

"Yeah."

Wylie searched the suits first, nothing interesting. Pre-paid cell phones, a grenade or two. It was while trying to wrench the hatchet from the first cultist's skull that he noticed it. The robes were soaked from the waist down. First he thought it might have been piss, but the smell was so much stronger than that.

"Darwin…Darwin!"

"What?"

"I know why it smells up here…"

Wylie wasn't sure what he was seeing at first but it didn't take long for the sight to register. Under the cultist's robes, where human legs should have been, there was nothing but a twisted mass of tentacles.


End file.
